


Teen Wolf, Season 1, Episode 1, Wolf Moon

by TheSomewhatRamblingReviewer



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Analysis, Episode Review, Episode: s01e01 Pilot, Episode: s01e01 Wolf Moon, Meta, Nonfiction, Season Premiere, Season/Series 01, Series Premiere, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-19
Updated: 2018-09-19
Packaged: 2019-07-14 07:07:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16035458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSomewhatRamblingReviewer/pseuds/TheSomewhatRamblingReviewer
Summary: Warning: Contains spoilers for both the episode and the rest of the series. Complete.





	Teen Wolf, Season 1, Episode 1, Wolf Moon

To start off: I really like Tyler Posey’s acting. More than this, I view it as genuinely good.

This puts me in a tricky place. There have been times I’ve found myself trying to make excuses for behaviour on Scott’s part I knew was bad. Reading a ton of talented meta writers has made it clear, as a character, Scott sucks.

Yet, I still find him an enjoyable character most of the time, and when it comes to Posey’s skills, I’m not on the anti-Posey bandwagon. I disagree with some of the things he’s said and done, but when it comes to actors/actresses, there are specific things that will make me say, ‘No, I’m not going to watch anything involving them,’ and, ‘I need to avoid finding out personal details about them, because, I don’t like what I’m seeing so far, but they haven’t done anything that’s a hard no.’

Zach Galifianakis is a good example of this. Anything involving his dramatic work, I’m going to enjoy watching, but I avoid all press/news/interviews involving him.

So, I’m probably going to be a mixture of grumpy about Scott and gushing over Posey’s skills.

In addition, there will be a lot of gushing over O’Brien’s skills in later episodes, because, he truly is a genius when it comes to acting. I don’t like some of what he’s said, either, but he’s also said things that I do agree with, and so far, he hasn’t gone as far Posey has in head-banging words/actions.

Finally, I’m not going to try to link where I read different metas. Some things, I got from listening to the podcast Teen Wolf Meta Podcast, and most of the things I read came from either Tumblr or LiveJournal, but otherwise, I don’t even know where I read it. There are clever people out there, and I extend all credit towards them for their cleverness, but not-so-clever me can read something, really enjoy it, click away, and then, not be able to find it again.

The series proper opens with Sheriff Stilinski and several officers with K9s in the foggy woods. This has always struck me as an interesting choice.

Someone else pointed out the end of the series ends with Stiles leading and surrounded by the others rather than Scott. So, it’s interesting the human dad started the series and possibly not-human but not probably not werewolf son ended it rather than any of the actual werewolves, teenage or otherwise.

Over at Scott McCall’s house, he’s fixing his crosse and working out. He’s a combination of muscled body, puppy dog eyes, and mop-y hair. Interestingly, when he looks in the mirror, he hears something foreboding. Some of the meta I’ve read is about how, unlike Stiles and Lydia, he avoids his reflection, and when confronted with it, it’s either warped or something bad soon happens.

Baseball bat in hand, he goes outside, and popping into view, Stiles Stilinski is hanging down from a roof/window. I feel no need to justify Scott’s demand of, “Stiles, what the hell are you doing?”

For all I’ll declare certain parts of the show likely happened differently due to Scott’s unreliable narrating, I believe this happened just like this, and Scott was perfectly reasonable in his reaction to it.

In answer to this question, Scott wasn’t answering his phone, and also, Stiles knows his dad is out due to half of a dead body being found in the woods. He’s decided they will go look for the other half, too.

Also, as someone pointed out, somewhat klutzy Stiles rather athletically hangs down during part of this conversation before doing a impressive flip.

Going further, his sarcastic response of, “No, a body of water,” when Scott asks if it was dead body is both interesting and sort of falls flat when one has read copious meta about water being bad news in Teen Wolf. Some joggers come across a body of water really wouldn’t be any better than them coming across a corpse.

Next up, Stiles pulls Roscoe up to the Beacon Hills Preserve, and Scott is wearing a red hoodie. For some reason, I could have sworn it was Stiles wearing that.

I blame fandom for this one.

Scott is going on about totally making first line on lacrosse, and Stiles wants him to accept they both suck and always will. It’s established Stiles hasn’t really planned out their little investigation, and again, I buy this. If this happened in later seasons, I wouldn’t, but I can believe Stiles is being accurately shown at this point.

Bringing up his own asthma, Scott digs out his inhaler.

They see the officers, and Stiles starts to run towards them. I question this, but I don’t think Scott is actively being manipulative in his narration here. I tend to think he’s not sure exactly how everything went down on the night he was bitten, and he’s just filled it in as best he could.

Stiles is caught, and as observed by someone much cleverer than I, the rain started falling just as he was.

“Hang on, hang on,” the sheriff says. “This little delinquent belongs to me.” Aw.

He calls out for Scott, but Scott remains hidden, and Stiles is hauled away.

Scott wanders around, and there’s no rain. There’s a stampede of deer, and he loses his inhaler. Eventually, he comes across Laura Hale’s body.

One theory about why Scott was bitten is: An asthmatic kid, left alone, has lost his inhaler in the woods during the night. Peter might been like, ‘Okay, if I bite him, he has a chance of surviving, and if I don’t, he’s dead for sure.’

Another theory is Scott being close to Laura’s body triggered Peter’s primal protective/anger instincts, and he attacked the potential threat to his fallen niece’s corpse.

Whatever the reason, Peter Hale in alpha form attacks, Scott runs out of the woods, and as will be revealed in season 3, he’s almost hit by Victoria with Allison in the car.

There’s more rain, and he lifts his shirt up to reveal the bite mark.

The next day, at school, Jackson Whittemore’s introduced.

Fair warning, I’m not sure how objective I can be about Jackson and Lydia. I started to like Lydia by the third season, and I liked Jackson when he came back in the sixth, but during seasons 1&2, I hated both characters.

Holland Roden and Colton Haynes are both talented, but for whatever reason, I just rarely enjoyed watching or even felt sympathy towards their characters during the first two seasons.

I’m not sure Jackson would realistically bother even acknowledging Scott at this point, but the fact he was a rich kid bully is properly established here.

Stiles appears, and showing him the bandaged bite, Scott expresses his belief it was a wolf. Stiles insists California doesn’t have wolves.

Lydia Martin walks by, and Stiles’s crush on her played a part in my irritation towards Lydia’s character. As good as O’Brien is, this is one thing he just couldn’t make enjoyable or interesting for me.

However, Roden and O’Brien do have good chemistry, and once their characters became actual friends who shared a true but platonic love towards one another, I enjoyed their scenes together.

Next, Stiles and Scott are in class, and Scott’s werewolf abilities start to manifest. He hears an incredibly loud cell phone, and then, he finds himself listening to Allison talking on her phone outside about how she forgot a pen. Someone escorts her inside, and ow at the line, “Hopefully, Beacon Hills will be your last stop for a while.”

She’s introduced as Allison Argent, she sits in behind Scott, and immediately, he silently offers a pen. Surprised and confused, she accepts it.

I dunno, I think I’d be a little creeped out, but then, I’m nowhere near as adventurous and brave as Allison is.

After class, they make googly eyes at one another until Lydia and Jackson come to Allison and Stiles and a girl, Harley, who will soon disappear come up to Scott. Lydia declares Allison her new best friend, Jackson and Lydia show annoying PDA, and Harley makes her disdain for Lydia and Jackson known.

Scott eavesdrops on Allison being invited to a party, she declines due to it being family night, and they drag her off to watch lacrosse practise.

The first time, Scott eavesdropping literally wasn’t his fault, but it’s not good he’s doing it here. I don’t think he’s honed his abilities enough he’s deliberately focusing them, but he could, at least, try to distract himself from hearing.

At lacrosse practise, he’s focused on Allison in the stands, and Coach Bobby Finstock appears. He puts Scott on the field, and there’s some convincing meta about Finstock about him working with either/both Deaton and Julia/Jennifer. Does he know Scott was bitten and that’s why he’s putting him on the field?

After getting knocked down via ball in the face, his reflexes kick in, and he begins catching with his crosse.

I’m not sure what to make of Finstock’s face. Maybe, he was testing to see if really was Scott/if the bite was taking. The question is, now that he’s getting confirmation, what exactly is he feeling? It’s been made clear, wherever his alliances lie, it’s definitely not with the hunters. He and Gerard’s mutual dislike of one another and him protecting Jackson, and by extension, Ethan, in the series finale proves this.

Angry, irritated Jackson steps up, Scott catches the ball, and Finstock’s face is even more ambiguous.

There are certain theories a person has that they know is extremely unlikely to be true, and yet, they cling to it. Mine is Jackson being Harris’s biological son.

A more likely fandom theory is that Jackson was intended to be Peter’s son/a Hale.

I do think Jackson was intended to show subtle signs of teetering between human and supernatural before Derek bit him and that both Finstock and Harris knew about him.

At Lydia’s cheering, Jackson gives her a look, and she’s just like, ‘eh, whatever.’

God, I’m going to have sit through give-or-take 24 episodes containing these two characters.

The next scene has Scott and Stiles going through water (bad) in the woods. They’re looking for Scott’s inhaler, and Scott shows some interesting medical understand as he suggests what he thinks might be going on with him: An infection is causing massive adrenaline before his body goes into shock. Stiles, however, suggests Scott is a werewolf, and not unreasonably, Scott brushes this off.

In another genre, Scott could conceivably be right.

Stiles says Friday is the night of the full moon.

Derek Hale shows up in classic creeper Derek style.

Tyler Hoechlin has always done great in interviews. Someone attributed this to Tom Hanks’ mentoring. I know he doesn’t ship Sterek, but he’s never shamed or tried to discourage anyone who did. Posey and O’Brien, on the other hand, I don’t care that they don’t ship Sterek, but they both could have been more diplomatic about it.

O’Brien didn’t intend for anyone to seriously read Stiles as bisexual/having feelings for Derek. That’s fine. I understand sometimes, even the best performers, can give a performance that conveys something they honesty weren’t trying to convey. A simple, ‘Yeah, I didn’t intend that, but I have no problem with people seeing it that way,’ would have been better than how he did handle it.

This out of the way, even before I heard anything from either actor, I knew Sterek would never happen. I never expected it to. Knowing this didn’t stop me from being a Sterek shipper. I’m one of those people who doesn’t need canon to like or dislike a ship.

Back to the scene, whatever O’Brien was going for, Stiles is majorly into Derek already and massively confused by this.

Derek declares this private property, tosses the inhaler to Scott, and instead of trying to talk to the new beta with the human kid around, he skeedales. It’s not clear if he identified which was the new werewolf, but I tend to think he correctly pegged Scott as a werewolf and incorrectly dismissed Stiles as nothing but a human kid.

Just wait, Derek. Soon, you’ll be pulling that possibly not human man aside to talk to him regardless of whether the other werewolf is around or not.

Stiles fills Scott in about Derek Hale’s family being killed in a house fire some years ago.

At the vet clinic, Scott closes up and is going to put some hydrogen peroxide on his wound. The only problem with this idea is the fact said wound is gone.

I wonder if the mountain ash was put in place afterwards, or if Scott is still human enough it’s not affecting him.

He tries to feed the cats, and they all freak out. I really hope, rather than letting them go hungry for who knows how long, he called Deaton to say he didn’t feed them or got Allison to do it.

Speaking of, a rain-soaked Allison shows up with a dog she hit.

The right thing to do would have been to call the police, animal control, or even her parents, not drive the injured animal to a vet. I’m curious to know how she even knew where the vet was. There are several plausible answers, but I want to know which one. Let’s just hope it’s not: She did call animal control or the police, and some idiot directed her to do this. I do believe neither Victoria or Chris would have told her to do such a thing.

Scott does actually shows some sense in this scene. He tries to calm her down, and he asks if she knows where she hit the dog. He plans to call aforementioned animal control to send them to the location. Good, Scott.

Upon learning said dog is her car, however, not to be outdone by stupid teenage decision making, he decides they’ll go to the car instead of calling his boss or animal control to come ascertain the contained animal isn’t dangerous, and then, he’ll provide medical treatment for the dog instead of calling his boss, who has actually studied, been trained, and licensed to do such things.

Also, Scott’s eyes glow for the first time when he’s getting the dog calmed down.

Among teenagers making bad decisions, there’s a spark between the two, and Posey and Crystal Reed do have good chemistry. Allison’s internalised misogyny is revealed, and Scott says all the right things. How much of what he says is real and what he wishes he’d said is up for debate, however.

Outside, it’s stopped raining, and bringing up family night, he asks about her going to the party with him. I’m guessing she assumed he heard about her conversation from school gossip, and she declares family night was a total lie. She agrees to go with him.

I’m not sure if it was a lie. I think the Argents probably did have family night, but Chris had a habit of skipping out. If Allison didn’t end up going to the party, would she have been hurt/pissed off by her dad skipping out on family night, especially since she turned down a date with someone she genuinely liked?

In bed, he’s all dreamy-eyed over this, he looks up at the almost-full moon, and then, when he turns over there’s a neat transition to him on the ground and turning over onto some leafs.

He gets out of a cave near some water, and in the fog, he sees the alpha. He runs parallel to it until he jumps a fence, lands in some water, and emerges to see a man in stripes (possession) holding a water hose.

At school, creeper Jackson confronts Scott.

Look, Harris could have gotten with one of the Hale women. Then, my theory and any plans for Jackson to be a Hale both could have been right.

He thinks Scott is on steroids, and Scott’s adorable response to his question of “juice” is, “My mom does all the grocery shopping.” Heh.

When he realises what Jackson means, he has the reasonable question of if Jackson is on steroids, and notably, Jackson doesn’t answer. Instead, he pushes Scott into the locker, and Scott loudly goes on about all his newfound senses and sleepwalking.

He gets a pass due to his lack of knowledge, but dude, there are hunters in town. They’re possibly already in the school. Maybe keep your freakouts a little more private.

Jackson’s declares he’ll find out Scott’s secret no matter how long it takes.

I have to wonder if Jackson was really this obsessed with Scott this early on.

At practise, Stiles tries to tell Scott that the sheriff has learned animal hair on the body was wolf hair, but Scott is too busy with practise.

Jackson and Scott have a dominance play on the field, and Scott comes out on top. He does so good that, though fussing about Scott’s gymnastics (i.e. keep your abilities a little more lowkey), the coach puts him on first line.

Next, Stiles is shown doing tons of research, and when Scott arrives, it’s implied Stiles has ADHD. Whether he does or doesn’t, he has canonically taken Adderall (not Ritalin, as I mistakenly heard).

Stiles shows his research, and Scott isn’t buying the werewolf theory. He just wants to go pick up Allison, and Stiles is worried a new werewolf being at a party might be a bad idea.

I’m not sure this conversation happened this way. Out-of-almost nowhere, Scott accuses Stiles of trying to ruin his life, and Stiles declares Scott cursed. This seems more like frustration in hindsight, and later on, Stiles is clearly shown to believe monster is what you do, not what you are.

Stiles’s response to Liam and Malia (ugh, I’ll get to her when she arrives) is, okay, let’s teach you how to handle things, not you’re unlucky to have these abilities, and he was more-or-less okay with Isaac, Erica, and Boyd getting the bite. He didn’t like some of what they did, but it was the choices they were making, not the fact they were given the ability to make these choices he protested. Even when they were targeted, he was against the people targeting them, not Derek for turning them into targets.

Scott gets aggressive, and after half-heartedly apologising, he leaves.

When he does, Stiles finds the chair Scott flipped has claw marks.

At the McCall house, there’s another mirror scene, and then, Scott’s mom, Melissa, comes home.

I’ve posted reviews of episodes before, and I’ve never had any acknowledgement of this one thing. It’s something I’ve noticed since the beginning: Melissa has different scrubs all the time.

In this scene, she has on regular clothes, but this aspect of the show genuinely bugs me.

I know that, in hospitals and nursing homes, there are different colours for different departments, and people working in paediatrics will often wear scrubs with child-appealing designs on them, but Melissa is constantly wearing different colours, and occasionally, her scrubs have patterns, though not something someone in paediatrics would likely wear.

Why is she constantly wearing different coloured scrubs? Even if her job requires her doing things in different departments, she’d still be assigned a certain colour of scrubs, and if she were constantly being transferred to different departments, I doubt she’d have any job at the hospital for long.

Moving on, Melissa Ponizo and Posey have good chemistry. She agrees to let Scott have the car, and there’s a shout-out to MTV’s Sixteen and Pregnant when they discuss his date with Allison.

Scott picks Allison up, and I think the party might be happening at Lydia’s house.

At the party, he sees creeper Derek, and naturally, this unsettles him.

Derek’s a fascinating character, and later on, I do find myself rooting and feeling deep sympathy for him, but there’s no denying he was extremely creepy during the first season, especially the first few episodes.

Though, on this note, I never found him to be an anti-villain/anti-hero during the first season. He was just this aggressive guy who was trying to look out for Scott, although, admittedly, in all the wrong ways, and find out who killed his sister.

Now, during the second season, I did find him a whole lot more morally ambiguous.

There’s an implication Derek might the alpha, and Allison brings Scott’s focus back to her and the party. They adorably hold hands and dance.

There’s an annoying shot of Lydia and Jackson likewise but far less adorably dancing.

The moon starts to affect Scott, and he excuses him. Ignoring Stiles’s attempt to help, he leaves, and Allison follows until he literally leaves her stranded at the party.

Cue Derek appearing. “Allison, I’m a friend of Scott’s. My name’s Derek.”

I give Derek so much credit here. It’s possible he did partly to send a threat to the Argents (‘Hey, Mom and Dad, this man named Derek gave me a ride.’), but there are so many other things he could have done for good or bad, including the neutral of just letting her try to figure this out herself. And yet, what he does do is tell the niece of the woman who took advantage of him when he was younger than Allison herself is now and killed more than half of his family he’s a friend of Scott’s, i.e. someone she has a reasonable expectation of being able to trust, and then, he gives the hunters’ daughter, the niece of the woman who did unforgivable things to him, a ride home before going off to protect Scott.

Let it be also noted: He could have used this as an opportunity to sabotage any chance of Scott and Allison happening, but even with his own history, he didn’t. He covered for Scott so that Scott would still have a chance with her.

At home, Scott stares at the moon before taking a half-dressed shower.

Oh, c’mon, at least, close the shadow curtain. His poor floors.

His claws appear, and wiping away the fog on the mirror, he sees fangs and golden eyes.

Stiles appears, and Scott refuses to let him in. Did he have a lock on his door earlier, or this is more of mirrorverse coming into play?

Scott declares werewolf Derek Hale bit him and also killed the girl in the woods, and Stiles reveals said Derek is who he saw giving Allison a ride from the party.

Scott’s response is to leave via his window, still shirtless.

He lands in a puddle, spit or something drips from his mouth, and his werewolf ears are visible. He howls/growls/roars at the moon. Then, he goes to the preserve.

Meanwhile, Stiles goes to the Argent house, and he babbles at Victoria Argent until she simply calls her daughter, and unharmed Allison appears. Heh. I’m not doing the scene justice, but I find it remarkably funny.

In the woods, Derek has used Allison’s jacket to draw Scott in, and he declares Allison is safe from Scott.

Then, Scott is shot by Chris Argent with an arrow, and Derek protects him by roughing up the other hunters to distract Chris long enough for him to free Scott. Scott is rightfully angry at being bitten, and Derek doesn’t do the smart thing and explain he doesn’t have the ability to turn people, it was a different werewolf, and actually, he’s hunting said werewolf himself, because, he thinks said werewolf killed his sister. Instead he goes on about the bite being a gift, and again, this could have waited until after Scott didn’t think he was the non-consensual biter.

I don’t think unreliable narration is in play here. It’s been shown Derek would never willingly bite someone without their consent. I think this is just Derek being so focused on the hope of still having a pack of some sort, he’s latching hard onto Scott without focusing on Scott as a person. To him, this is great: There’s another werewolf, he can help him, they can be pack, and they can figure out who killed Laura and possibly do something to drive the Argents out of town.

He leaves after declaring, “We’re brothers, now.”

My guess is, he thought Scott needed some time to process, and this would have been a good call if he’d left him with the right things to process.

The next morning, Stiles has tracked Scott down in Roscoe. He’s also brought Scott a shirt, and he makes it clear he’s not in the mood to hear about Allison.

Scott, however, is mopey, and Stiles promises they’ll get through this.

At school, Allison confronts him, and instead of taking the out she gives him and claiming he suddenly got really sick, he begs for her to please, just trust he had a good reason. She asks if she’s going to regret this, and he answers, “Probably.”

Eh, it’s debatable.

She agrees to give him a second chance, and Chris shows up to pick her up.

Wait. It was established Scott and Allison have a morning English class together. Did she wait all day to confront him? Did he avoid English today? Is Chris picking her up for lunch? Even if I'm wrong and English class was during the later part of the day, why isn't she using her own car? Is this unreliable narrator or mirrorverse?

On a personal note, if I were interested in someone and a member of their family _shot_ me, even if I had supernatural healing, I think I’d probably avoid said person. Even if, like Allison, the person wasn’t involved or even in the know about what said family member had done, I’d still want to try to make sure said family member never, ever has another opportunity to shoot me, and if the price for this was not getting involved with someone I liked, so be it. There are other people out in the world, and most of them don’t have family members who’d shoot at me.

As later episodes will show, Scott has vastly different priorities.

Fin.


End file.
